


when everything you're holding onto falls

by Illusively (Hermia)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:05:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermia/pseuds/Illusively
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek didn't have fingers enough to tick off the times he laughed at Stiles' “preparations” for the apocalypse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when everything you're holding onto falls

Derek didn't have fingers enough to tick off the times he laughed at Stiles' “preparations” for the apocalypse.

The supernatural was in his blood. It was part of his daily life. 'What horrible thing or person's going to try to kill me today?' was a question that came to mind sometimes hourly. But there was a limit to how much any one person could believe, and the zombie horde was just beyond his saturation point.

Reanimated dead. Corpses brought back to life, decomposing and yet mobile, with hands and nails and teeth and a taste for living human flesh. It was just too much. 

Stiles began stocking bottles of water and cans of nonperishable food at the Hale house a grand total of three hours after the first rumor of a virus hit the Internet. He was unreachable, moving around as if pulled on strings, twitchy and breathing shallow and looking at everyone with wide, scared eyes.

“You don't get it.” His lips, chewed raw while checking and double-checking the supplies, smeared a rust-colored stain in the very center of Derek's gray t-shirt. “I can't do this. I – I was always gonna be the one who dies first. That's me. The plucky comic relief who gets his ass torn in half to make everyone realize this is serious business. That's me.”

He didn't die first.

Danny died first.

Jackson half-dragged, half-carried him into the Hale house, desperate for answers and shouting at the top of his lungs for Stiles to give them to him. He was sick. A fever burned through him, heating up his skin and making it difficult for him to speak. In the end, the only thing of worth any of them got out of him was a choked, “Some dick bit me.”

Once he was patched up as well as Derek could manage, Jackson forced the lot of them out. Erica tore away from the Hale house to scout the surrounding area. Allison rubbed a hand between Scott's shoulders, both of them sitting on the very edge of the only couch in the burned out old house. Lydia watched the door separating them from Jackson and Danny. And Stiles stared at Derek, watched the thoughts churn in his head, watched the realization of what was going on dawn on him.

A moan was punctuated by a bullet exploding from the chamber of a gun and a high-pitched shriek. Allison's eyes snapped to Lydia to see two small hands clamped over a small mouth, fat tears clumping long, thick lashes together.

“Sorry.” 

The muffled apology trembled as it left her. 

No one spoke for a half hour after that; they only opened their mouth when Jackson left what remained of the old kitchen, rubbing at the back of his neck. Everything he touched turned red.

Three days later, they found out the wolves were immune to the virus.

A panicked Isaac returned to the house, his eyes a dangerous shade of yellow as he gripped at Derek's sleeve, begging him to 'help her.' Everyone in earshot knew what happened when they heard his nails rip into worn leather when all it took was a look at his face to see the truth of it. 

“Four of them. In – in the woods. Erica, she wanted to kill them to keep them from getting closer. We haven't even _seen_ any of them this far out.” Isaac's tongue darted out of his mouth to wet his chapped lips, eyes bleeding back into a stormy blue. He gripped tighter onto Derek's arm. “We should've been able to take them, but they don't – they don't _stop_. They don't hurt. They just... they kept clawing at us, and one of them, one of them bit her.”

They found Erica sitting up against a tree, her head tilted back and her eyes closed and her skin an odd, pale shade. Derek narrowed his eyes at Jackson when he heard the boy click a bullet into the chamber of his pistol. 

“Took you long enough.” Her head tilted in their direction, upper lip twitching at the exertion. “It's healing. I can feel it.”

It made sense. If they could heal from burns and bullet wounds and even worse, why couldn't they push a virus out of their bodies? Erica seemed dead set on surviving this, so Derek helped her to her feet and they began the trek back to the house. Time would tell whether or not she could actually fight the infection.

“So how did you kill them? We really have to find everyone some kind of weapon. Something that doesn't make noise like Jackson's gun.”

“With my bare hands,” she said with a flash of teeth that was more of a grimace than a smile.

Stiles didn't ask her any more questions after that.

Isaac stayed by her side through the night, watching her every movement and talking to her when she asked how the bite looked. The skin on her bicep was easily one of the more disgusting things he'd ever seen, but in situations like this, things got worse before they got better. At least she didn't have a fever. He made sure of that with a shaking hand rested against a full cheek.

By noon the next day, she was up on her feet, digging into a can of corn liberally seasoned by her own hand and ignoring every look Jackson aimed in her direction.

That night, Derek took to the stairs, taking each step slowly despite necessity begging to drive him forward at a quicker pace. He knew Stiles was there, sitting on the chair in front of the only unbroken window on the second floor, staring into the woods like he could see anything out of eyes that hadn't closed in days. An insomniac on a good day, everyone knew he would crash soon. And when he did, he'd crash hard.

They were both silent, even as Derek rested both hands on his slumped shoulders and Stiles scooted over to the far side of the wide cushion. Derek sat next to him, squeezed between the skinny seventeen year old and the arm of the chair, for a few minutes before he pulled him into his lap.

“Let me give you the bite.” The words were rough against the soft cotton of Stiles' t-shirt, but he could feel the boy go rigid in his arms. “You saw what it did for Erica.”

“Derek...”

“ _Stiles._ ”

He shook his head. “I can't. You know I can't. I might  _die_ .”

“If you don't let me, you _will_ die.”

Stiles scrubbed his hands over his face. “Maybe,” he said on a heavy exhale. “It's not a sure thing. Maybe I won't die. Maybe it'll be me and a fuckton of werewolves repopulating the planet.”

He heard Derek release a low, frustrated growl into his shoulder blade.

“I can't, okay? And I need to go into town.”

Derek's brows pinched together. “Why?”

Stiles leaned back against him, thin fingers wrapping around Derek's wrists to pull his arms tighter around his waist. “Because my dad hasn't called me in roughly 34 hours.”

Everyone figured only one Stilinski would end up coming back to the Hale house after a trip into town.

They just figured it would be the wrong one.

The Sheriff was holding his own at the police department. The good thing about living in such a lowly populated area was a general lack of crowds. Whatever virus swept through left Beacon Hills littered with abandoned cars and bodies in various stages of decomposition, more than half of them dead twice over. The others soon followed. Stiles had a baseball bat he borrowed from Scott. Derek had his own claws and strength. Jackson had Danny's lacrosse stick and his pistol tucked close to his body on safety, not willing to chance setting off a round in the middle of the city.

They found Stiles' dad with a small group. Deputies, mostly, all of them exhausted-looking and haggard in a way they understood. No one had time to sleep when they were too busy being paranoid, jumping at every creak and shuffled step.

But he wasn't going to leave. Stiles' father was just as dedicated and headstrong as his son. And not half as stupid as the men working under him.

The deputies had guns. Guns made noise. Noise drew a crowd.

The three of them were trapped inside of the building before they knew what was happening.

Jackson pushed the deputy with a sketchy trigger finger up against the wall as Derek struggled to keep the doors closed, splinters digging into his palms where they dug into the wooden slats hammered into the frame. They were strong enough to keep the zombies out for the time being, but there was only so much any front line could take.

Fists beat through the wood on the door, oblivious to what would be painful to any living being, ignorant to the breaking bones of their fingers and the torn skin and the blood. Derek only staggered away from the door when a jaw snapped and teeth dug into the flesh of his forearm.

Before he could so much as take a breath, he felt the barrel of a shotgun pressed to the back of his head.

“You know, I never liked you much, but I don't really want to do this.” It was the Sheriff. Stiles' dad. The one who watched with a level stare as the twenty-four year old he'd hauled to jail more times than he could count took his son out on their first date. The one who kicked him out of the front door when he found them less than half-dressed on the living room's only couch. 

  
Despite the zombies' loud, guttural cries for more and Stiles' screech for his dad to lower the gun, Derek closed his eyes. Part of him knew he wouldn't end up on the ground, brains everywhere, one less living among too many dead. But another part of him considered the possibility. That maybe the man at his back wouldn't be completely opposed to shooting his son's boyfriend if it meant keeping him alive.

“Dad! Dad, stop. Just. Just _trust me_ , okay? He's alright!”

With the walking dead outside, no one asked questions when Derek's eyes went from green to red and the bite on his forearm began to heal.

At first, the thought 'odder things are happening' was what kept them quiet, but once the zombies broke through the front door, they didn't have time to ask for an explanation. There were more important things. Surviving. Surviving was more important than their questions. Watching men they trained at the academy with get mowed down and ripped apart and eaten alive by what was left of people they knew just as well came first. 

Fighting tooth and nail down familiar hallways didn't prove any easier for them. They knew they had to get out the back, that they had to find some way out of the building. Trapping themselves inside wasn't an option.

And they were nearly out when the sheriff fell.

Derek was already outside, his skin sallow and his eyes still red as his body fought off the infection. Jackson was right behind him, his pistol in one hand and the lacrosse stick in the other. Stiles had been the first out, but at the sound of his father hitting the tiled floor just before the back door, he turned around and ran back in his direction.

“Get up!”

“No! You get out of here!”

Stiles bent over his dad, his baseball bat rolling down onto the pavement as he gripped him under his arms and struggled to haul him onto his feet. “No way am I leaving you here. No way. Get up!”

Everyone was too tired to be of any help. It took precious seconds to get the sheriff on his feet, and before he was out of the door, the hallway was crowded with zombies. The noises they made were deafening. Loud and mindless, groans from deep in their chest without any articulation, snapping jaws, shuffling feet, limbs banging against doors and walls and whatever else they passed along the way.

No one was ever quite fast enough. 

Danny was quick on his feet, but he'd been bitten. Isaac was the only person he knew was faster than Erica, and she'd still gotten ripped into. When it came down to either him or his dad, everyone knew who he would choose.

Stiles barely caught Derek's shout of his name before he shoved both of his hands into his dad's back and sent him stumbling forward. Jackson grabbed him before he fell, and Derek was up the pair of stairs and inside the hallway just as the first set of teeth dug into the muscle between Stiles' neck and shoulder. Blood gushed out of the wound, seeping up around the woman's mouth, and the both of them were pitched forward.

The pain nearly knocked Stiles' feet from under him, head bowed just low enough to give Derek enough room to take a swing at the zombie with the bat he'd only just discarded.

She fell to the side with a sickening crack, softened bone splintering the moment her head hit the wall. The ones behind her shuffled forward, but their pace was nothing compared to his. Strength and speed paired with adrenaline and desperation had him out of the door with an arm wrapped around Stiles' waist in no time flat. Jackson wasn't shaking nearly enough to keep him from locking the door from the inside and slamming it closed.

Getting back to the Hale house wasn't any easier, even with the sheriff behind the wheel of a squad car and Derek's hand applying pressure to the bite. The blood didn't stop flowing. The color didn't stop draining from Stiles' face. The tremors running through his body only began to slow when he started slipping.

“Stop.” Derek's voice wasn't as loud as it was commanding. “Stop the car.”

They were no more than two miles away from the house when Stiles stopped breathing.

The sheriff stayed in the car, his fingers curled around the steering wheel so tight his entire fist ached. Jackson followed Derek down away from the road, through the thick underbrush of fallen leaves until they were far enough away from the squad car to keep his dad out of it.

“How long do you think he has?” Jackson asked. 

Danny's lacrosse stick stayed behind in the car. He only had his pistol, and he kept shifting it from one hand to the other. 

Derek's jaw twitched as he set Stiles down on the ground. The way his head flopped over to rest against the leaves gave Jackson the answer he was looking for.

“You have to shoot him,” Jackson continued, palming over his pistol to the opposite hand for the hundredth time.

Derek didn't say a word.

“You have to. If you don't, he'll come back.”

Again, he didn't say anything. He pushed himself up onto his feet and turned to leave. It was Jackson who pulled him back. 

“Do it,” Jackson spat out, shoving his pistol into Derek's hand as his eyes burned gold and pupils began to flatten. All it took was a cursory glance at his throat to see the sudden spread of scales just under his jaw. “Do it before he comes back. Do it!”

“I'm not going to _shoot him_!” 

When Jackson reached for his pistol, Derek pulled it away. “You're not going to, either.”

They walked back to the car in silence. Jackson popped open the passenger's side door just as the sheriff took a sharp breath and rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. Derek sat in the back again, his body pressed to the door, temple against the glass, as far away from the dark gleam of blood on the opposite side of the seat. If he ignored it, ignored the smear of red on his hands and the smell of it on his clothes, maybe he could convince himself that he'd return to his burned out family home and Stiles would be there, waiting in the room he claimed as his own, eyes on the front of the house, waiting for him to bring his dad back safely.

Just as the car began to drive away – slowly, as if Sheriff Stilinski was waiting for Stiles to get up and jump in the car and ask him why they were leaving him behind, Derek picked up a sound. 

A soft, tremulous moan and a rustle of leaves.

He bit down hard on the inside of his mouth.

He could see blood. He could smell blood. Now he could taste blood.

“Drive faster.”


End file.
